The Day the Flowers Died

The Day the Flowers Died

It was 1968 and flower power was the call sign of the day. I lived twenty minutes and forever away from the center of hippie-dom: Greenwich Village, New York. Deep in the bowels of New York City was this mecca of flowers, sandals, free love and my best friend Lauren and I thought that it was the most wonderful place in the world.

We were determined that we would live there one day. We would walk barefoot and wear love beads. We would say meaningful things like "groovy" and ride in a van painted pink and yellow and covered in Peter Max flowers. We'd have flowers in our hair, our hands and our souls.

One Saturday morning, having decided that ten dollars between us was more than enough, we boarded the bus and left for the Village. We wore hip-huggers and tight tank tops covered with crocheted knit vests. We had our string purses, our sandals (couldn't convince the bus driver to let us on barefoot), our head bands and our ideals. We were fourteen years old and thought we so very grown up.

The bus left us at Port Authority in New York City. From there it was a long walk or a short subway ride down to the Village. After a long ten blocks or so, we opted to take the subway the rest of the way. Wandering down the maze of platforms for a while, we finally figured out just where we were supposed to get the train.
Sitting next to each other on the subway, we kept being stared at by these two guys. They had long (to their waist) dirty hair held in place by beaded headbands that looked shiny with grease. They had on ragged bell bottoms and T-shirts that read "Hug me, feel me, touch me...I'm Horny." They smelled terrible.

"Are they hippies?" I whispered to Lauren. She wasn't sure, but she hoped they weren't.

At long last we came to the stop for the Village. We had arrived and ran happily up the long flights of stairs to the street. This was what we had been looking for. Bright eyed people everywhere we looked. We fit right in and soon were wandering around the streets flashing peace signs and feeling very cool.

We looked in tiny shops that seemed to be growing at the edge of the sidewalk. We wandered through pottery shops and endless jewelry boutiques. The sun was bright and the air was scented with incense. A lady with long black braids that touched the street behind her gave us each a flower telling us to "love everybody."

A guy with no hair at all and three earrings gave us cookies and told us that the cookies were the made with the "elixir of life." The cookies were good and they really did seem to make us feel more alive. We were pretty hungry by then and he was more than happy to let us have some more. He told us he was called Wizard Man and then told us about a party and said that everyone would be going to it and did we want to go too.

Just then someone ran up behind us and started arguing with him. Suddenly they were fighting. Lauren and I got jostled about by the crowd and then I noticed that my purse was gone. Lauren's was too! Luckily she still had some money in her jeans, but everything else was gone. So was our friend, the Wizard. Not about to have our day ruined, we blamed it on someone's being a jerk and decided that it would be simply part of the adventure.

Lauren and I crossed the street and went into the park. There were people sitting on the grass playing guitars and singing. We sat down and soon were singing along. People with names like Lilac and Serendipity offered us drinks from leather pouches and someone named Tiger offered us hot dogs. The sun was really hot and it seemed that the guitars were playing lullabies. Soothed and feeling safe, I fell asleep.

I woke up to darkness and the sound of Lauren screaming. She was kicking and screaming at two guys who were trying to drag her into the bushes. I hit one of them on the head with a rock. People came running from across the street. The guys holding Lauren dropped her and ran into the darkness.

Her jeans were ripped nearly off and she had the beginnings of a bruise near her eye. She was crying and saying she wanted to go home. I did too. Lauren's money was gone and we didn't know what to do.

One of the guys that had run to help us gave us some money and then said he'd get us back to the bus station. His name was Freaker. He looked kind of scary to me and I wasn't sure who to trust any more. Then the lady with the long braids came over and told us that Freaker was her old man and that she'd come along too. Her name was Moonlady and she'd been nice to us earlier, so we went with them.

Moonlady asked us how old were and when we told her, she said we never should have been wandering around the Village alone. It was supposed to be nice and safe and full of love we told her. She laughed and said that we weren't ready for the kind of love we'd find there.

On our way back to the subway, we saw the Wizard again. He was leaning against a lamp post and was sound asleep. He's not asleep, Moon lady told us. He's stoned out of his brain. He's on a trip to nowhere, everywhere and somewhere.

The pretty flowers that Moonlady had given us earlier had been trampled in the park, so Moonlady gave each of us another as we boarded the bus back home. They were wilted and turning brown around the edges.